Ivan Towlson (@ppog_penguin) is a programmer, software architect and speaker. He works for Microsoft on the team responsible for Cloud-native developer tools including Helm, Draft, Brigade, Duffel, CNAB and VSCode extensions for Kubernetes. In this interview, recorded in a noisy Hotel lobby during Codemania 2019, we cover a wide range of topics from distributed data structures to functional languages to the history of .NET and why Microsoft is investing so heavily in opensource. Ivan and I are employees of Microsoft and our opinions are our own. Show links: Microsoft Fast Track for Azure Code ..read more

In this episode of Azure Lunch I chat with Tiago Barbosa, a FastTrack for Azure Engineer based in Portugal, about his ten-year career at Microsoft from intern to Senior Engineer on the Azure Engineering Team. As well as several key announcements at the Microsoft //Build 2019 conference for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and much more. Tiago and I are employees of Microsoft and our opinions are our own. Show links: Azure Kubernetes Service Announcing the preview of Windows Server containers support in Azure Kubernetes Service Create and manage multiple node pools in AKS Microsoft Azure Red Hat ..read more

In this fascinating interview, recorded at Microsoft //Build 2019, I talk with Sharad Agrawal, Program Manager at Microsoft about Azure Front Door. This remarkable service fronts some of the largest web properties on the planet, including Xbox, Bing, Teams, and Azure DevOps, serving millions of requests per second. Azure Front Door is now generally available to all customers, offering a truly global Layer-7 Load-balancer with Web Application Firewall, DDOS protection, automatic SSL certificate management and much more. Sit back and enjoy as Sharad takes us deep into this service and the Micros ..read more

At Microsoft //Build 2019 I spent time talking to some of the people who build the products and services that run on Azure and on Windows. In this Build Special I combine two interviews; the first with Dan Rosanova, Group Program Manager for Azure Messaging, and the second with Craig Loewen, Program Manager for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). But first let's hear Dan Rosanova talk about two of the amazing messaging services provided by the Azure Platform: Azure Service Bus and Event Hubs, including recently announced Availability Zone (AZ) support and Azure Event Hubs for Apache Kafka. Next ..read more

Divya Sangar started her career in Fiji doing Dialup Internet and PABX installations (when we used to connect customers by hand, crimping on to the MDFs). Now she works on one of the largest private owned fibre networks in the world, the Microsoft Azure Global Network. In this episode Divya takes us on her journey from Network Engineer to Global Networking Blackbelt, unraveling mysteries along the way of this fascinating area of computing that enables distributed services to operate at truly global scale. We also talk about the recently launched ExpressRoute Edge Node in Auckland, which allows ..read more

In this episode I have the good fortune to spend some time with Chimène Bonhomme - A Data Scientist and Technical Solutions Professional at Microsoft New Zealand. Chimène lists a Masters of Information Technology, Business Intelligence and Data Science, as well as a Bachelor of Health Science, Medical and Molecular Biosciences as two of her many amazing achievements. In this episode I ask Chimène for her perspective on Data Science, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, asking the question: How much data science is "enough to be dangerous"? Show links: Microsoft Azure Machine Learning ..read more

Azure Lunch podcast had an unplanned outage a few months ago while we took time adjust to a couple of pretty big changes. In this new "Series 2.1" we reboot with a new show, a new sponsor, and best of all lots of amazing guests. Daniel has been lucky enough to travel across the world to Microsoft //Build 2019 and to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. As well as other events at home in Auckland, NZ. In this trailer we feature snippets from interviews with Microsoft Architects, Engineers, Program Managers and Specialists, showcasing just a few of the people that work hard every day t ..read more

In this episode Dan picks Matt's brain on "Serverless" and what is in a name - what does Serverless really mean? And where are all the servers? In this wide-ranging talk we discuss which workloads suit Serverless technologies, common programming languages and frameworks including the new Azure Functions Runtime 2.0, and the radidly expanding range of services that fall into the serverless category: Azure Functions, Open FaaS (Functions as a Service), Serverless Databases (!) and global platform services that present as "serverless" including Cosmos DB, Azure Event Grid, Event Hubs and more! Sh ..read more

We kick off the 2019 season with a quick review of what we have been up to over the (NZ) summer break, skilling up with Microsoft/Learn and Dan has a report from Seattle. We talk private networking with PaaS, Network infrastructure at a global scale and how this enables amazing services like Azure Front Door and Cosmos DB. And wrap up with what we have planned for this Season 2 of Azure Lunch! Show links: Azure Architecture Centre Microsoft Learn Azure Front Door Azure Cosmos DB Azure Lunchtime Meetup Microsoft NZ Partner Hub Azure Lunch is a regular podcast of news and views from Microsoft ..read more

In this bumper end-of-year episode Matt Simpson and Daniel Larsen, Senior Technical Evangelists at Microsoft, wrap up 2018 with their favourite Azure announcements and make some predictions for the year to come. We also talk Data, Compute and Messaging Futures including Apache Kafka on Azure Event Hubs, Azure Cosmos DB multi-master writes, Dead letter and retry policies in Azure Event Grid and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Show links: Microsoft NZ Partner Hub Cloud practice playbooks Azure Lunchtime Meetup Use Azure Event Hubs from Apache Kafka applications Global data distribution with Azu ..read more